Nizu's best pages - First Edition
There are some pages in the manga that have panels that take it to the next level. I always paid a lot of attention to details, but in this manga, I'm going beyond the imaginable. I'm literally zooming to pixels to try to perfect the art as much as my skills allow me to do it.
Welcome to the first edition of Nizu's BEST PAGES. In today's post, we're covering Chapters 1 to 4.
This is page 10 of Chapter 1, 'The One-Eyed Girl.' It's the first time I've felt real pain as an artist (laughs). Setting up the dining room for the orphanage was incredibly hard. I used Unreal Engine 4 to render it and spent a considerable amount of time making sure it was set up correctly and made sense with the other areas of the building. Surprisingly enough, I worked really hard on details that never made it onto the page because the panels required specific angles.
That first panel, OMG, that first panel 😲. Rendering all those girls was a total nightmare. To place a character into the scene, I needed to first use 3D software and design the entire character. Since this was the beginning of Nizu, I didn't have any models yet for the orphanage girls, so it took me a while. In the end, I realized the craziness of making every girl unique and decided to duplicate some of them. You can see the frequency of their repeating.
In the last panel, you can see that there are seven layers of illustration. In my opinion, that panel is genius. It conveys a lot without telling much.
The original Photoshop file for this page weighs 1.7 GB !!
I remember having flashbacks of Page 10, Chapter 1 when I was creating the storyboard for this chapter. That huge panel in the center (laughs) took me four months to produce. I experimented with different angles, revised its initial design, and I'm confident that I delivered an amazing panel.
The original idea was to show readers the entire classroom. However, the challenge was that the panel couldn't interrupt the flow of the story, so I needed it to develop the character of the teacher, who has a short time present in the chapter.
Just in that panel, we learn that the teacher had a rough past with alcohol, almost got divorced, and has some sleeping issues. She also says that all that information is a lie, but who knows, maybe she is just ashamed of herself? When the still unnamed character raises her hand to address the teacher's concern, we see that she introduces the teacher's last name. This is good writing right there. Every action has a purpose to push the narrative forward and to reward readers with new information, all without disrupting the flow of the storytelling.
In my opinion, as a manga reader, this is an amazing page. I will always hold dear the time I spent working on that huge panel and all the amazing details that I'm sure 99% of readers will miss but that complement the overall experience.
That's it for this first Edition!
These days I've been working on the Nizu App. I know it's sad that because of that, Chapter 5 will be delay, but trust me, Nizu app will be amazing, and the best place to enjoy anything related to Nizu.
See you soon!
Leen iO,
3/12/2023
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